A couple of questions.... One for level 60

WaniKani
#1

Hi,
Not sure if it was discussed before and I’m not excluding the possibility of me being thick. But sometimes I have a problem with how Wanikani is dealing with definitions.
Let’s take the word for “action” you have: 作用、仕草、事、行動、活動。。。
All these have “action” as part of their definition in Wanikani, I feel it’s sometimes confusing. anybody else has the same experience?

Also, I was wondering what’s happening with the burned kanji, do they ever come back around to make sure that they are still remembered, or do they stop showing up at all?

cheers.

n.

1 Like
#2

You can “resurrect” them manually (which just starts them over at the lowest SRS level, I believe), but they won’t show up in reviews ever again otherwise.

#3

I’ve not used it, but I believe there’s a userscript called Burn Manager that let’s you review and resurrect your burned items.

Edit: link to Burn Manager

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#4

There’s the WaniKani Part-of-Speech script that will give more dictionary like definitions to words on review pages. You could check it out.

#5

Nuances between similar words will make more sense as you get more familiar with kanji, and as you see them used in different contexts. I also resurrect burned items if I do a dictionary lookup on something and realize it was in WK all along :wink:

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#6

They go away when burned, though you can as mentioned resurrect them.

I tend to view items learned on WK as not fully learned until you’ve either encountered them in the wild, or tried to say them yourself.

As an example, I was talking about a walk in the woods, and tried describing the path I was walking on as 路地 and promptly got correct that it is not “dirt road” as WK lists it, at least not in the mind of whoever I was talking to. To her, it was only an alley between houses. WK is to me at least, a gateway to reading which in turn will reinforce whatever is needed and provide sufficient context to be able to use in conversation.

#7

Funny you should mention that one. The recent overall actually changed it to alley! But I do agree with your point. Context will come from usage.

#8

It may be better to treat the meanings as more of a reference that you attach the Kanji to rather than a definition. Seeing and hearing it in context and real world usage will tell you what it means to Japanese people.

#9

@casquette Well, I also have this experience of confusion when lots of japanese words have the same meaning in English, especially when English is not my native language. I mostly try to translate to my native in these cases and see if there’s a difference. If there’s still no visible difference, I ignore that fact until I learn some grammar.

However, learning all precise meanings would greatly slow down the speed of doing lessons/reviews in my opinion. Also, from my experience with English - learning a foreign language requires (and comes natural) that at some point you start actually thinking in it and nuances become clear through practice.

#10

In this thread’s wiki, there’s a section for 作用、仕草、行動、活動 (All kinds of Actions)

As for 事, I would define it to mean more along the lines of ”thing" or “incident”. Other nuances have been discussed in the thread’s comments, so be sure to check that out as well! Feel free to ask more nuance questions in that thread! Hope this helps a bit :grin:

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#11

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